John McCain's "respectful campaign"
I'm not sure what is more laughable, the fact that John McCain stated a few months back that he planned to run "a respectful campaign," that he so quickly retreated from this statement, or the outrageous ads that he has since endorsed.
Even one of McCain's former strategists John Weaver has balked at McCain's juvenile ad, saying, "There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn't at Obama's. For McCain's sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop."
Strangely, Weaver's words echo and parallel what I wrote on 27 July: "I just hope McCain does not ruin what he stands for (or at least stood for in 2000) in, for all intensive purposes, an offensive strike against Obama politically and personally. McCain has done too much for this country, both in uniform and on the Senate floor, to be remembered as 'the angry old man' who threw everything at Obama, much like Clinton did earlier this year, in an gamble for the Oval Office."
Beyond the peculiar and sickening tactics that McCain's campaign has brandished recently, the fact that it seems to have slipped McCain's and his advisors' minds that going negative, especially extremely and very publicly negative, often has significant consequences.
Daniel Larison, on both the supposedly sympathetic The American Conservative site and on The Atlantic's "Daily Dish," rather harshly takes McCain to task not only for trying to brand Barack Obama as a vapid celebrity like Britney or Paris, but "treat[ing] Germans in an essentialist way and try[ing] to reduce them to the most cartoonish stereotypes, as if a cheering throng of Germans in Berlin, c. 2008, must necessarily conjure up associations with Nazi rallies."
There have even been accusations of "racist" intent in McCain's ads -- a claim I think is fundamentally without base, but does show the type of fallout that can and will occur when a candidate takes such a negative turn, and some of these accusations have a few logical threads running through them, enough to give "The Daily Dish's" Chris Bodenner "pause."
BusinessWeek's David Kiley reported on 28 July in his piece "The New Normal: McCain's Desperate Ad Hours": "What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props."
While it was sad enough that McCain, after basically baiting Obama into his 'world tour,' tried to brand him as "unpatriotic" for saying that he was, after first proclaiming himself "a proud citizen of the United States", a "fellow citizen of the world," he then tried to say he had some problem with America's troops because the Pentagon intervened in a planned trip to visit wounded soldiers in Germany.
Is McCain out for blood?
Again, on both The American Conservative's "Eunomia" and The Atlantic's "Daily Dish," Daniel Larison writes about McCain's "lies" and the bizarre claims of "race-baiting" after the Britney, Paris, Obama ad. Larison seems rather cynical about both McCain's and Obama's campaign strategies in "The Election In Miniature," and it doesn't look like this race will be getting any 'cleaner' anytime soon.
He has tried to make Obama out to be "the world's biggest celebrity" and "an elitist," while, as Newsweek blogger Andrew Romano writes, "Only celebrities like John McCain own seven homes, date Brazilian models, marry blond, jet-owning heiresses worth $100 million, ring up $500,000 a month on the family credit card, forget the last time they pumped their own gas and wear $520 black calfskin loafers by Ferragamo."
John McCain asks Americans to sacrifice, but what exactly? As "The Daily Dish" blogger Chris Bodenner writes, "A man who gave 6 excruciating years to his country can't ask Americans to forgo 6% of their annual income? Does he want all of us to act like the materialistic, self-absorbed hippies he left for Hanoi?"
Coming across as angry and imbittered, and making ridiculous claims such as Senator Obama is willing to lose the Iraq War if it means that he'll win the presidency, has nearly silenced what John McCain claimed to stand for. This is no longer a campaign about the issues, it is about mudslinging and trying to pull every skeleton out of every closet in a thirty-second ad spot, even if you have to manifacture some of the corpses yourself.
While McCain may still be in the race according to recent poll numbers, he's lost what attracted so many to him -- his intergrity.
THE BRITNEY, PARIS, OBAMA AD
Even one of McCain's former strategists John Weaver has balked at McCain's juvenile ad, saying, "There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn't at Obama's. For McCain's sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop."
Strangely, Weaver's words echo and parallel what I wrote on 27 July: "I just hope McCain does not ruin what he stands for (or at least stood for in 2000) in, for all intensive purposes, an offensive strike against Obama politically and personally. McCain has done too much for this country, both in uniform and on the Senate floor, to be remembered as 'the angry old man' who threw everything at Obama, much like Clinton did earlier this year, in an gamble for the Oval Office."
Beyond the peculiar and sickening tactics that McCain's campaign has brandished recently, the fact that it seems to have slipped McCain's and his advisors' minds that going negative, especially extremely and very publicly negative, often has significant consequences.
Daniel Larison, on both the supposedly sympathetic The American Conservative site and on The Atlantic's "Daily Dish," rather harshly takes McCain to task not only for trying to brand Barack Obama as a vapid celebrity like Britney or Paris, but "treat[ing] Germans in an essentialist way and try[ing] to reduce them to the most cartoonish stereotypes, as if a cheering throng of Germans in Berlin, c. 2008, must necessarily conjure up associations with Nazi rallies."
There have even been accusations of "racist" intent in McCain's ads -- a claim I think is fundamentally without base, but does show the type of fallout that can and will occur when a candidate takes such a negative turn, and some of these accusations have a few logical threads running through them, enough to give "The Daily Dish's" Chris Bodenner "pause."
OUT FOR BLOOD?
BusinessWeek's David Kiley reported on 28 July in his piece "The New Normal: McCain's Desperate Ad Hours": "What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props."
While it was sad enough that McCain, after basically baiting Obama into his 'world tour,' tried to brand him as "unpatriotic" for saying that he was, after first proclaiming himself "a proud citizen of the United States", a "fellow citizen of the world," he then tried to say he had some problem with America's troops because the Pentagon intervened in a planned trip to visit wounded soldiers in Germany.
Is McCain out for blood?
"As he did in the primaries, McCain is simply
making things up about his opponent's positions and actions..."
making things up about his opponent's positions and actions..."
Again, on both The American Conservative's "Eunomia" and The Atlantic's "Daily Dish," Daniel Larison writes about McCain's "lies" and the bizarre claims of "race-baiting" after the Britney, Paris, Obama ad. Larison seems rather cynical about both McCain's and Obama's campaign strategies in "The Election In Miniature," and it doesn't look like this race will be getting any 'cleaner' anytime soon.
WHO IS JOHN MCCAIN?
John McCain asks Americans to sacrifice, but what exactly? As "The Daily Dish" blogger Chris Bodenner writes, "A man who gave 6 excruciating years to his country can't ask Americans to forgo 6% of their annual income? Does he want all of us to act like the materialistic, self-absorbed hippies he left for Hanoi?"
Coming across as angry and imbittered, and making ridiculous claims such as Senator Obama is willing to lose the Iraq War if it means that he'll win the presidency, has nearly silenced what John McCain claimed to stand for. This is no longer a campaign about the issues, it is about mudslinging and trying to pull every skeleton out of every closet in a thirty-second ad spot, even if you have to manifacture some of the corpses yourself.
While McCain may still be in the race according to recent poll numbers, he's lost what attracted so many to him -- his intergrity.
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